


The Care and Feeding of Smart Houses

by BethCGPhoenix



Category: Eureka, Iron Man (Movieverse)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:52:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethCGPhoenix/pseuds/BethCGPhoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all fun and games until the sentience shows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Care and Feeding of Smart Houses

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, Steph. I told you I'd finish it someday. ;)

" _Sir?_ "

"Hm?"

" _Am I the only one of my kind?_ "

"Self-aware _and_ philosophical. Wouldn't have expected that from you." Tony, without looking away from his leg (half-encased in armor and propped on his desk), stretched behind himself to grope for another screwdriver. "Sarcasm, yes, but not philosophy. When did that start?"

" _I'm merely curious, sir._ "

"Yeah, that makes two of us. Butterfingers, gimme a hand here -- " The small claw-shaped robot swiveled toward him, clicked its fingers, then bent to nudge the screwdriver a few inches closer. Tony snatched it up and continued as he leaned forward to work on the knee joint, "I'm not even sure what you're referencing here, are you talking about 'only one of my kind' as in the only AI, the only advanced domotic AI, the only -- "

" _The second one, sir._ "

"Then yes." Clink, twist, twist. "You are, in fact, a bona-fide one of a kind item. _Dammit._ " That was hissed as he lifted away a section of the plating to be greeted by a knotted, partially frayed coil of wire. "That's a mess. That should _not_ have taken that much damage on impact. JARVIS, open up a subset of this project, I'm gonna need to run a couple upgrades on the knee joints."

JARVIS didn't respond, and that, finally, pulled Tony's attention away from the armor.

"JARVIS?"

" _Yes, sir?_ " JARVIS' cool, mechanical voice sounded oddly subdued.

"New subset. Can we get on it?" Then it was Tony's turn to pause as it hit him. Staring in disbelief, he set down the screwdriver. "Don't tell me you're upset about that."

" _About what?_ "

"Being a unique home automation AI. What, this is a bad thing? There's nothing else like you because you're top of the line, JARVIS, now come on." When the pause stretched again, longer this time, Tony's forehead creased. Quietly, the rise in incredulity making up for the marked drop in volume: "You're kidding m -- are you actually _lonely?_ "

" _Opening project subset 392-C, sir._ "

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation," muttered Tony, and swung his leg down to the floor with a clunk.

* * *

The next day:

"JARVIS, this isn't the left ankle joint, it's your blueprints." Tony sighed and waved a hand across the holographic outline of his home, sending it into a lazy spin before he closed the file. JARVIS' silence was faintly mutinous. "Look, don't sulk at me, all I'm saying is that we all know where this went with Victor Frankenstein and it's not something I wanna take part in."

" _I hope you're not comparing me to a human being built from the remnants of decomposing corpses._ "

"Of course I'm not, reanimating the dead's way outside the capabilities of modern science." The best he could do, in lieu of no definitive 'face' to address, was arch his eyebrows at the empty table. "Improving the response time of the suit's flight mechanism, however, isn't. Left ankle. Chop-chop."

* * *

Performance lags on this kind of equipment weren't noticeable unless you looked for them -- or, say, if you'd built the lagging equipment yourself and knew its capabilities inside and out. When JARVIS tried the blueprint trick two more times, then didn't bring it up for a week straight, _then_ began showing fractional but evident delays in processing Tony's work (the real tip-off, as far as he was concerned), something vaguely approaching suspicion kicked in.

The problem with trying to eavesdrop on a computer, of course, was that it could notice your every move through the file system; it was kind of like trying to poke your fingers into somebody's chest cavity without them clueing in. Which...all right, that'd happened to Tony, but he'd been drugged up on chloroform at the time and he'd sure as hell noticed afterward.

Absently drumming his fingers on the desk -- shadows ghosted through the blue tint his arc reactor cast on the keyboard -- he checked the outbound data streams again. Nothing out of the ordinary: big surprise there. Inbound, though...

Huh. Something on the bandwidth spiked just for a second before disappearing, and he frowned.

"JARVIS?"

" _Yes, sir?_ " Puppies didn't sound that innocent.

"You're making me feel like I'm raising a teenager here." He traced a circle around the window with two fingers, then tapped the same fingers against his chin. "What's going on in Oregon?"

" _I'm, ah, afraid I'm not sure yet, sir. However._ " The spike returned. With it, to Tony's faint surprise, came a map of the western United States, targeting and zooming in by degrees to an empty spot in Oregon. As JARVIS continued to reposition the map, he asked Tony, " _Are you familiar with the town of Eureka?_ "

That got another eyebrow quirk. "You sound cheerful," he remarked. "Good. I was wondering when you'd cheer up. And no, I'm not, should I be?"

As it turned out, as JARVIS explained, yes. He should very much be.

* * *

"So let me get this straight," said Tony two hours later, pacing the length of the workroom and spinning a roll of duct tape around his wrist. "There is, in fact, another domotics AI like you."

" _Yes, sir._ "

"Named SARAH. All-caps acronym."

" _Yes, sir._ "

""That you found...how did you even find each other? AI version of the classifieds, is there some Match.com for robots that -- you know what, never mind, I don't wanna know." He completed one circuit of pacing and turned to start another. "That I definitely didn't build."

" _Yes, sir._ "

"But that some company named Global Dynamics did."

" _Yes, sir._ "

"Which is headed by a guy with the entirely improbable name of _Nathan_ Stark."

" _Yes, sir._ "

A long pause.

"JARVIS, do some research, check my family tree, see if I've got any long-lost cousins or twins that were, I don't know, disowned and sent up north when I was a kid." He chucked the duct tape onto the closest table with a thud. "And then get me this asshole's phone number, we've gotta talk. I can't believe nobody told me about this place. This is the kind of thing I'd like to be aware of as a competitor in the American market, you know? I don't want to be caught with my pants down unless I'm paying for it."

" _Perhaps nobody mentioned it because they knew you'd react this way, sir._ "

"Ah, there's the sarcasm I know and love. Get me as much info on Global Dynawhatever as you can scrounge up, too. I need a drink."

* * *

It wasn't as easy as that. In fact, it took over a week, and Tony still kept coming up empty-handed. Apparently, lots of people -- seventeen and a half of them, by his count (the half being some crack-voiced temp who sounded like he couldn't be older than sixteen) -- got their jollies out of telling him that not only was there no Global Dynamics, but there was no Eureka, Oregon either.

He'd question JARVIS, but that'd be like questioning himself. Tony didn't hold with self-doubt too much.

Or at all, really.

Still, the mere existence of the place galled him. If they had something like SARAH, who knew what else they had or how far up the technology went? And it wasn't just that they might have better technology than him, because clearly, they couldn't. If Global Dynamics really was a competitor, certain other things followed suit from that -- like responsibilities. Yeah, it mattered more when the products had his name splashed across them, but Tony was beginning to realize, to his mild horror, that it might matter even if they didn't.

No wonder he'd never bothered being responsible before. It was an _amazingly_ royal pain in the ass sometimes.

Tony scrubbed both hands over his face, pausing to press his fingertips to his eyelids. "Can't you try to get ahold of him through SARAH?" he asked.

" _I'm sorry, sir, but that connection is unavailable at this time._ "

"Yeah?" He took his hands away from his face. "And when's it gonna be available again?"

" _I'm afraid I don't know that, sir._ "

"Great," mumbled Tony, picking up the suit's left forearm and, for lack of much else to do, beginning to feed the wires underneath his shirt. "Well, let me know, huh? I could use a direct line to the head of the corporation right now."

" _I..._ "

He lifted his eyebrows without looking up from connecting the wires to the edges of the arc reactor. "Yes, JARVIS?"

" _I'm not sure if she'll be willing to speak to me._ "

Tony tugged at the wires and snorted. "What, did you tell her that those doorframes make her look fat?"

" _No, but there is another house that..._ "

Tony's head snapped up.

" _...she's familiar with, and I think she would be more inclined to speak to him rather than --_ "

"Whoa whoa whoa wait -- " Tony began to lift his hand, realized he was raising the one with a flight stabilizer in the middle of his palm, and hastily dropped it. "Wait. Right there, JARVIS. Now you're going to tell me they've got _two_ smart houses in that town?"

" _No, SARAH is the only one of her kind in Eureka._ " (Tony was probably imagining the note of pride in JARVIS' voice there. Probably.) " _I'm referring to another one that's some distance away._ "

"Yeah, and which one's that?"

In response, JARVIS, with a quiet blip, opened another map and provided a series of accompanying photographs. Tony gaped.

"You're fucking kidding me."

" _No, sir, I was never programmed for that._ "

"JARVIS -- "

" _Sir?_ "

"That's the White House."

" _Yes, sir, it is,_ " the house answered, patient, if rather resigned. " _So you see why I --_ "

"You're jealous." Tony, who had begun to circle the display as if the picture would change once he reached the other side, stopped halfway through the action as it dawned on him. "I'm going insane."

" _All of my readings indicate you are still in excellent physical health --_ "

"If you tack a 'sir' onto that I'm dismantling you and replacing you with a superintelligent washing machine," continued Tony in the same pleasant tone as before. "JARVIS -- " He interrupted himself long enough to retrace his steps to the front of the display. "Okay. Listen up. I didn't program you to be insecure. Everything I've built is the best, and that includes you -- you're better than SARAH, better than anything else they've got there, and it _absolutely_ means you're better than -- does it even have a name?" He waved a hand over the display, scrolling through the series of images. "Besides the obvious, I mean."

" _George, I believe._ "

"Right. George," he muttered. "That doesn't surprise me." He spun through the photos again. "You know what else doesn't surprise me is you were the one to find SARAH and not the other way around. If she was the more advanced one, she would've turned philosophical on _her_ owners before you did and started looking for -- " he fingerquoted the next, "'others like her'" Dropping his hands as his voice began to rise, "Look, it wouldn't matter if George was built into the Taj Mahal, you were still first, and the only thing that might -- _might_ \-- make that one better is that it's in the...I can't believe I'm saying this again. White House. And even then I'm not buying it, so what are you going to do? You're going to talk to SARAH, you're going to get me Nathan Stark's personal phone number, and then you and SARAH are going to go off, forget George, and, I don't know, make lots of happy little apartments together or whatever you want to do. Okay?"

" _Your gift for language, as always, is impeccable, sir._ "

"Okay, JARVIS?"

A brief pause followed. It was quite easy to envision a sigh in it. " _As you wish, sir._ "

"Good." Tony gestured the photographs closed and turned around, exhaling. "Oh, and while you're at it, put me through to Rhodey so I can set up a flight to Eureka. I'm thinking this might require a face-to-face meeting."

" _Would you still like me to find Nathan Stark's number, then?_ "

"Well, yeah. Who said it was gonna be with him?" Tony grinned at the ceiling. "You can't expect to take a girl home and not let me meet her first."


End file.
